


It Seemed The Better Way

by Agent_Ravensong



Category: Sanders Sides (Web Series)
Genre: Angst, Flashbacks, Gen, Mid-Canon, Pre-Canon, Preteen Virgil & Janus, Remus only cameos, Virgil ducks out, both Virgil and Janus are jerks to each other but neither are meant to be unsympathetic, content warnings in notes at start, with a guest appearance from someone else..., woo boy the angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-29
Updated: 2020-06-29
Packaged: 2021-03-04 03:41:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 13,050
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24907021
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Agent_Ravensong/pseuds/Agent_Ravensong
Summary: Years and years ago, Virgil came to Janus with a problem. They both swore themselves to secrecy. In doing so, Janus discovered his purpose.Now, as Virgil looks back on that decision, Janus comes to him with some questions. This time, they don’t see eye to eye.Virgil has to pick a side. He chooses neither.
Relationships: Anxiety | Virgil Sanders & Deceit | Janus Sanders
Comments: 9
Kudos: 29





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first Sanders Sides fic, a one-shot with a short epilogue, exploring my theories/headcanons relating to Virgil and Janus's pasts. I'd love to hear your thoughts on the story; you can leave them in a comment here or send an ask to [my Tumblr, @janus-stanus.](https://janus-stanus.tumblr.com/) I'm always up to ramble about my process!  
> Content warnings:  
> \- Imaginably standard for fics about Virgil choosing to duck out, but we get into his self-hatred and wanting to disappear  
> \- Homophobia (the characters don't literally experience it but the description of it is fairly intense)  
> \- Spider-related body horror, not much more extreme than Patton turning into Lilypadton though  
> \- Temporary possession  
> \- And one brief use of Zalgo text  
> Bonus: If you're a fan of Spotify playlists, [I've made one for this fic!](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7A6n1tgx4zIpvV9WDx1ppF?si=aZJ59nJNRMWlxh8Adq6QxQ) It borrows some songs from Virgil and Janus's playlists, but that doesn't necessarily mean they're being used in the same context, or even from the same character's perspective. Feel free to listen to it while or after reading :)

Virgil had to steel himself before entering Janus’s room. It always unsettled him how empty yet cheery it was. The daffodil yellow walls and carpet, plus the faint scent of lemon air freshener, made him queasy, and there was nothing else to add any character or additional color. The one object that wasn’t a yellow-tinted carry-over from Thomas’s bedroom was the cushioned yellow chair Janus was currently lounging in. He seemed to have dozed off in it, still in his black pants, bright yellow polo shirt, and sparkly dark purple waistcoat. The sight made Virgil feel somewhat underdressed in his lilac pajamas.

The door shut behind him, and Janus’s eyes fluttered open. When he saw the intruder, dragging behind him a thin black blanket patterned with skulls, he let out a beleaguered yawn.  
“Yes, Virgil?”

He approached cautiously, rubbing his fingers against his safety blanket to calm his nerves. He did his best to block the clips of the evening broadcast from his mind for the moment. Instead, he forced eye contact with Janus, and, in a hushed tone, spat out the words that had plagued him for the past hour:  
“Is Thomas gay?”

“…What? You mean, does he like guys? No, obviously,” Janus retorted as he rubbed his eyes. However, when he lowered his hands and saw the sincere concern in Virgil’s face, he paused.  
“Are you sure?”

**⁂ Present-day: Early July 2017 ⁂**

It’s a quarter past midnight, and Virgil finds himself in a paradox. His body has dissolved into jello and cries out to sink into bed, yet it turns to stone whenever he even thinks of leaving his post. His face sags like melting wax, but his eyes remain wide open, staring with laser intensity into the formless darkness of his room.

Usually, it’s easy for him to pin down the origin of his fatigued insomnia; some issue he blew out of proportion during the day, or a potential problem lurking on the horizon. Not this time. It was a good day. Just like yesterday, and the day before, and every other day in the past week. It’s standard for Thomas, and presumably the other three, but for Virgil specifically? It’s the first time in Thomas’s adult life that he’s experienced this level of calm. He could get used to it - if it didn’t come with the itching need to do something about it, to tear back the curtain and drag out the monsters lying in wait, to make himself useful. In combination, he’s left with a light, murky haze of apathy filling in the gaps where his emotions should be, creating the sensation of him slowly rising into the air. He needs to feel something. He wants to feel bad.

So he slides off the desk into the leather chair, closes out of the Evanescence playlist on his laptop, and pulls up the video that has rooted itself in the back corner of his mind. While it was uploading, it was the typical brand of anxiety that made it monopolize his attention. As Joan and Thomas had said, coming out was something you’ll never be done doing; however, this video was as close to a final statement of intent as anything would be. There was no turning back from here, no more ~~lying~~ hiding. And, even this many years on, he was still terrified of the fallout.

However, now that it’s immortalized on the web and thousands of unknowable eyes and ears have consumed it, with comments still rolling in by the dozens, the uneasy feeling wracking his body is of a different nature. Because they love the video, of course they do. The online community that has formed around Thomas never ceases to amaze him. Just a year or two ago he’d have laughed at the idea that he’d choose to scroll through the comments on one of Thomas’s posts, but here he is, once again proving his visions of the future wrong. It’s the most he’s smiled in years (though the competition for that honor has been more heated recently than it was for a long, long time).

He scrolls past multiple _“I’m here, I’m queer”_ jokes, compliments for everyone who took part, proud declarations of identity, and allies sharing their support. Those all warm his heart, but the ones which make him pause are the uplifting coming out stories: people who opened up to friends and found they have more in common than they knew; people who gathered the courage to have the talk with their parents (not in the foolhardy way he had, god no, he has yet to watch through the video without skipping that part); people who found acceptance in their communities, even religious ones, even at school. And more than that, people, total strangers from every corner of the globe, who claim Thomas as an inspiration for them living their truths.

It’s those comments that trigger the uneasy feeling. That, and whenever the word **“repression”** resounds in his headphones like a high-pitched whistle.

Virgil lives in the negative. He deals not just in apprehension and fear, but in embarrassment, regret, and guilt; and he exaggerates each instance by his nature. But this whirlpool in his gut is the result of more than just one bad memory, one isolated failure. It was a chain of choices that formed the armor which has since fused to his bones; actions taken and opportunities passed over, things said and unsaid, truths suffocated and lies that gained a life of their own,

“You called?”  
Virgil slams the laptop shut almost hard enough to shatter the screen. He flicks the desk lamp on, then swivels his chair to face the intruder, shaking his head a few times to part his bangs.  
“...Janus.” Not the bad feeling he was looking for.

“You remembered,” he grins, an artificial glimmer in his eyes. He takes a second to adjust his capelet and ensure that the golden clasps on his shirt are perfectly in place. “Forgive me for the lack of professionalism, I had to take care of, a thing.”  
From the way he says ‘thing’, Virgil knows exactly who he’s talking about. Some things never change.

“You couldn’t have knocked first?”  
“I thought we were beyond that point in our relationship,” Janus pouts, putting his hand to his chest. “You’re not going to kick me out, are you?”  
“Depends,” Virgil responds, without missing a beat, as he pulls his headphones off his ears and tosses them onto the desk. “Why are you here?”  
“To talk.”  
“About what?”

“...I was hoping you would take the lead on that front,” Janus says, “You’ve always been so good at that. But if it’s up to me, I suppose I could provide a starting point.” He makes a show of glancing around the dimly lit room, recoiling slightly at the inexplicable smell of lavender and expired Halloween candy, before he locks his gaze on the anxious side with the most neutral smile he can muster. “What are your feelings on last month's _‘Having Pride’_ video?”

Virgil huffs as his body tenses. He wants to say ‘fine’, but then he remembers who he’s talking to. “In all honesty? They’re mixed.”

“Really?” Janus gasps, with all the subtlety of a piano plummeting from a third-story window. “I’m, quite frankly, _astounded_ to hear that from you. Why?”

Virgil rolls his eyes. “Look,” he hisses, “I don’t know what you’re hoping to get out of this, but we are **not** going there.” He flips up his hood and spins the chair a full 180 degrees. “Good to see you, now get out. Maybe try again another time.”

For a moment, the room goes quiet, music to Virgil’s ears. Then Janus fires back, with words like daggers:  
“If you say so. It’s all water under the bridge now. Just, don’t sit there and make yourself out to be the victim.” When he gets no reaction, he gives a final thrust: “I did it for you, remember?”

Virgil’s hands clamp down on the armrests. He tries not to say anything, to just let him have the satisfaction of having the last word and leave. But the last statement out of his mouth devolves into outright mockery as it echoes in his ears, begging to be challenged.  
In the blink of an eye, he rises and sharply turns to face his opponent. “You keep on saying that,” he growls, leaning in with his arms crossed atop the back of the chair, “But you and I both know it stopped being true a long time ago - if it ever was true.”

Janus’s eyes narrow. He briefly flashes his fangs, but he bites his tongue. Instead, he plants one hand on the chair, as if throwing down a dueling glove, then shoves it toward the other wall. Virgil catches his balance just before he’s sent tumbling forward, his hood sliding back down.  
“Apologies, let’s try that again,” the scaly side smirks. “You were saying?”

Virgil takes a moment to refocus his frustration. “How mature of you,” he mumbles (not that he should have expected better from him). Then he jerks his head up so he can drill his eyes into the snake’s as he continues. “I won’t pretend I wasn’t in on it to start, because believe it or not I’m better than that. Thing is, I realized later that it was a terrible idea, that it would only make things worse in the long run, for all of us. So I asked you to give it up. Did you listen? Of course not. And you never said _why_ you couldn’t, you just-”

“Because you knew,” Janus cuts in, his voice sparking with indignation, everything else about him suddenly stone cold. “You knew exactly why.”

All Virgil can do is stare blankly back at him. While he waits for further clarification, he idly notices the dark smudges fading in under the other side’s eyes.

Janus cocks his head in turn, scanning every inch of Virgil’s clueless face. He opens and closes his mouth a few times. When he fails to find the words, his arm begins moving with a will of its own.

Virgil notices the trembling hand in his peripheral vision right before it lands on his shoulder. He takes an abrupt step back, and from the depths of his subconscious something roars, “Don’t _you **dare t-**_ ”  
And it clicks.

**⁂**

_“Are you sure?”_  
It was the kind of question Janus would never have thought of, and he had no clue what had brought it to Virgil’s mind. Was Thomas gay? Of course not, they’d know if he was. But, how could they know if they never bothered to ask? 

“I can check if it’ll get you to leave,” Janus sighed. Virgil nodded, folding the blanket over his arm. So, with another yawn, Janus stretched his arms back and wide, leaned forward, took a few seconds to smoothen out his hazelnut hair, then groggily rose from his seat.

Without a dedicated role other than “fighting with Patton when he wanted Thomas to do something lame/dumb” and “keeping Remus in line”, Janus had spent much of his existence observing, investigating, and planting roots in Thomas’s system. If he wanted to know something about him, even something buried in the deepest depths of his subconscious (everything except the one thing he most yearned to know), all he had to do was concentrate on his query, and the answer would come to him.

So Janus dug his striped socks into the carpet, shut his eyes, and wordlessly asked.  
A chorus of hisses rang in his ears before he’d even finished his thought.  


His eyes flung open, startling Virgil.

“Well?”

“Well,” Janus drawled, “I’m certain.” Before the anxious side’s expression could fully settle into one of relief, he clarified, “Certain that’s he’s not straight.”

Virgil froze, like a character in a movie put on pause. Only his eyes showed the slightest hint of movement; they were still locked on Janus, but the irises quivered like flames. Janus’s room sometimes had this effect on him and the others, making them clam up when they were overwhelmed with emotions; however, it was supposed to only last as long as it took whatever thought got them riled up to pass. This time, Virgil remained petrified for nearly a minute before Janus tried to snap him out of it.

“What’s wrong, Virgil?” He prodded. “What has you so upset over Thomas liking guys?”  
“That’s. Not.” The words barely squeezed their way through his clenched jaw and zipped lips; they came out low and breathy. Janus gave him the chance to finish the thought. He didn’t. The color was draining from Virgil’s face, making his already pale skin practically transparent. His rigid body began to shiver violently. Janus tried waving his hand in front of his face. He didn’t even blink.

“Virgil? Can you hear me?” Janus asked, in a more gentle, almost fearful tone. No response but the haywire chattering of teeth.  
He took a breath, then reached out a hand. He knew Virgil hated physical contact, but such a visceral reaction, he hoped, would at least bring him out of this state.  
His hand clamped down on Virgil’s shoulder, and-

Yelling. In voices he knew as well as he knew his own: mother and father, brothers, grandparents, cousins, teachers, classmates, neighbors, friends; and voices of strangers, simulacra yet all too real; voices angry and horrified and crushed and cruel, yelling and laughing and lecturing and jeering; voices, and eyes, drilling straight through him, slicing through any makeshift defenses he threw up, he could feel them boring into his heart and gut, the words being tattooed on them, on his soul; and he could feel his stomach quaking and his cheeks stinging and his nose bleeding and his ribs cracking from the blows, he could smell and taste the neon blood, like pennies being poured down his throat only to be retched back up; and he saw the front door slam in his face and knew it would never open for him again, he turned and saw friendly faces that twisted into demons’ and shoved him down, turned their backs and disappeared into smoke; and as he struggled to get up while phantom limbs kicked and beat him, clawed at him, chained him to the ground, he saw the night’s broadcast, the holy people in the streets spouting hatred in the name of love, with signs and chants whose messages tore him open like a round of gunfire; and the smoke climbed ever higher, dissolving his lungs, and the flames bursting from the floor clung to his skin, and he screamed; he screamed without words, he screamed without sound, he screamed to no one, he screamed at himself; he screamed and it changed nothing, he screamed and it only hurt worse, he screamed, dug in his fingers, and screamed  
**“DON’T TOUCH ME!”**  


Janus’s clenched hand freed itself from Virgil’s shoulder-blade and retracted in a blink, sticking to his side. Panting, he took a step back, barely catching himself when he almost fell into his chair.

Virgil’s mouth still hung open as he sucked in air. His eyes, staring into nothing, were fading from an electric purple back to muted brown, though the left one seemed to be taking longer. A thick smoky aura emanated from him, with tiny bolts of lightning flashing within it. His blanket had fallen in a heap to the floor.

As their breathing stabilized, the rest of the mindscape deathly still and silent, the echoes of potential futures continued to thunder in their ears; taking their sweet time to dissipate; ensuring they would never be forgotten.

Janus understood. He understood all too well.

Their gazes locked onto each other, desperate for an answer to the question that was gnawing at them both:  
 _What do we do now?_  


**⁂**

The look in Virgil’s eyes makes it clear that he finally understands. True, it wasn’t Janus’s only motivation for going about things the way he did, but he isn’t in the mood to delve into all that. Nor does he want to ask why Virgil couldn’t put it together on his own; nor interrogate him about how he had filled in the gaps in his understanding before this realization. Janus came here for a fencing match, some good old fashioned bonding, not a duel to the death. So he switches out his swords.

“You were right,” he exhales. “Let’s not get into that. It’s not why I came here anyway.”

Virgil’s look of contempt has not softened. “ **You’re** the one who-” Then he stops himself, takes a breath, and briefly shuts his eyes. “Know what? I’ll take it. Just go.” He tries to make his final declaration sound intimidating, death stare and all, but it comes out like the whingeing of a cranky teen.

Thankfully, Janus doesn’t comment on his flub. “Can’t we find something else to talk about?” he asks, his salesman’s smile returning to his face. “I know you’ve been cooped up in here for the past few months, not socializing with _anyone_ , but surely you have _some_ news to share.”

“Nope, just me being me,” Virgil shrugs. “I figured you appreciated having one less problem child to babysit.”

“Oh, it’s been wonderful. It’s _so_ much easier to deal with Remus now that I’m the sole target for his… experiments.” He pauses to shudder. “But seriously, how is that ‘redemption arc’ of yours going?”

Virgil blanches. It takes a minute for him to process the question, the premise being so… ludicrous. He shakes his head and snickers in disbelief. “You think _that’s_ what I’ve been getting up to up there? You’re joking. No, I just get dragged in whenever there’s a problem, because I’m part of the problem more often than not, and then I do whatever I have to so that I can get out of there.” He’s surprised by the despondency that sneaks aboard his tone halfway through. He hopes it also goes unremarked upon.

“I didn’t think Thomas had that kind of power over you,” Janus snarks in response. “I thought you just show up whenever you want, even when Thomas has no reason to be anxious, to get on their nerves and otherwise make things worse; and any of the times you do provide something of value are entirely unintentional. Or has that changed?”

“No, you’re just wrong,” Virgil counters, shoving the memories that would beg to differ to the back of his mind. “I’m not here to ruin Thomas’s life, I’m here to do a job.” A job which drives him to ruin Thomas’s good days and make his bad days worse, yes, but a job nonetheless.

“As we all are. But not all of us are so ‘chummy’ with the people working down the hall, are we? And not all of us are on speaking terms with the boss.” He sheds his playful posture, and there’s a glint of something genuine in his eyes when he poses the question: “Don’t you think you’re due for a promotion?”

The gears are spinning on overdrive in Virgil’s head, attempting to piece together the other side’s endgame. He knows his interpretation of the events is wrong; however, is it an interpretation based in malice, or… he can’t find the right term, but it sounds something like, aspiration; hope? For what?

He can never tell where he stands with Janus. At least he generally knows what to expect from the other three when he shows up: Roman will be self-righteously antagonistic towards him; Logan will often share his priorities but insist on a more realistic, less emotionally charged approach, all while taking whatever he says literally; and Patton will treat him like one of his uncooperative kids, with the same level of sappy affection he seems to have for everyone, however misplaced. They’re all open books to him (not that there haven’t been some… unexpected developments), whereas Janus is a series of puzzles with instructions in a language he was never taught. Which, considering how little time he’s spent amongst the others by comparison, is…

“It’s nothing to be ashamed of,” Janus follows up. “Rather, I’m, for lack of a more apt term, proud of you.” Choosing not to witness Virgil’s reaction to that statement, he begins pacing back and forth. “There was no reason for me to doubt you could pull it off, certainly not more reasons than I could count on all thirty of my fingers, yet you surprised me. Inspired me, even. Why, by the end of this year, who knows? Maybe we’ll **all** have parts in the next impromptu musical number.” He stops and looks back over his shoulder, the shadows under his eyes deepening. “No, I’m not still upset about- nevermind; you get the point, don’t you, Virgil?”

The machinery in Virgil’s head has shrieked to a halt. The epiphany which has dawned on him is at once both blindly obvious, and entirely incompatible with his understanding of the person standing before him. “Actually, I think I do now,” he drawls. “You want to be the one up there, arguing with Patton and the others like old times, except maybe this time you can get Thomas on your side. You want to be on their level. You want it so badly that you imagined this whole ‘redemption arc’ narrative out of nothing-”

“I’m sorry, is that not the term for when ‘the bad guy’ wants to stop being ‘the bad guy’, and the ‘good guys’ begin to see him as more than just a ‘bad guy’?” Janus is practically shaking with exasperation, his air quotes becoming more aggressive with each use, but he presses on. “For crying out loud, one of the first ‘sessions’ of yours I tuned into ended with the four of you all saying, or _implying_ , that you love each other! And not one of them made an exception for you - what more proof do you need? Why deny it?”

Any other day, Virgil would feel proud of himself for having flustered Janus so thoroughly; however, at this moment, the question underlying his own bewilderment refuses to go unanswered any longer. “Do you even hear yourself?” He scoffs. “Why do **you** want this to be true so badly when you’ve defined yourself by _hiding away parts of Thomas_? You’re **literally** De-”

“Because things change, Virgil!” He exclaims, hands flying up and out. “Your escapades have proven that to me. Thomas is nearly thirty; maybe he could stand to have some more nuance in his life than Kid’s First Creativity and regurgitated Sunday school lessons can provide. Learn how to handle the real world in all its, unpleasantness; you know, grow up a bit. …Don’t you want what’s best for him?”

It always seems to come back to that for Janus. Virgil gave up counting how many times he used that line as a justification for whatever lie he whispered in Thomas’s ear, whatever long con he got them tangled in, years ago. It was how he convinced him to make, arguably, the worst decision of his life. And now here he is, uninvited and having long outworn his welcome, using the same line to make the exact opposite case. Yet, both then and now, the argument somehow involved Janus deserving more influence, more power.  
How is Virgil supposed to believe him? How did he ever trust him?

He blinks, and he sees Thomas, a faux Thomas, staring back at him with a knowing grin, like a viper slithering up to a cornered mouse. Virgil sees fangs, scales, a silver tongue, and a sickly yellow eye. He also sees, beneath those eyes, heavy layers of shadows.  
He sees the worst of Thomas, and he refuses to let it be his future.

“I **do** want what’s best for him,” he says. “Thing is, **you** aren’t part of that.”

He instantly regrets the way it comes out, with all the tact of a handmade grenade. Unfortunately, before he can take it back, Janus shoots it mid-air:  
“But you are?”

The shock wave bounces off the walls. The room shakes, shifts, then freezes over.

“No,” Virgil retorts, instinctively, truthfully. He takes a shaky inhale, and the air cuts up his lungs. There’s so much more he wants to say, needs to say; but Janus’s glare, an injection of shock, disbelief, disappointment, and fury directly into his veins, triggers almost two decades of conditioning, and his tongue goes limp in his mouth.

“Really, Virgil? You thought you could hide something from me? Oh, you’re so… _adorable_ ,” he sneers in disgust. Black fog creeps into the edges of his vision, a vaguely familiar sensation. “I see how it is now.” His mind is running faster than he can keep up with, threads coiling into spiral staircases, leading straight down to his heart. “You spend a few weeks in the spotlight with _them_ and suddenly you’re too good for your real friends. You stay away because you want to forget we exist. You won’t acknowledge the idea that they’re coming around to you because that would mean it’s possible for us too - not just for me, but for Remus and-”

“For the last time, that’s not what’s happening,” Virgil snarls, unable to keep the venom out of his voice. “This whole ‘redemption arc’ thing is bullshit.”

“Is it, is it really?” The spiders who have made their homes in Janus’s brain pull the strings. “Or, OR, do you not like the term because it implies you need to be redeemed? Because it means you’re just as ‘bad’ as the rest of us?”

“No, I **know** that,” Virgil insists, swallowing his own bile, “and **they** know that. That’s why it’s bullshit.”

“Do you?” Janus laughs. The cobwebs in his ears blocked out everything after Virgil’s first four words. “Sounds to me like you might need a reminder.”

 _I don’t need you to do my job for me_ , Virgil thinks - and at that moment, it occurs to him that Janus has been in his room for a bit too long.

But he’s already started. He rattles off mistakes and failures, sins and lies, like a man drunk on wine and power, the bugs in his brain supplying ever more ammunition.

“Tell me, Virgil, how many high school presentations did you tank by taking center stage? How many first dates? How many interviews?” He stands stiff as a statue as he rains down judgment, but his face rapidly shifts between dastardly grins and revolted scowls. His voice oscillates as well, between his own hissings, Virgil’s growls, and a distorted, almost demonic, version of Thomas’s. “You nearly ruined his latest audition and then went about criticizing him for it as if it wasn’t your fault. Certainly not the first time that’s happened.”

Virgil yells for him to stop, or he thinks he does. Either way, it accomplishes nothing.

“How about we circle back to high school, the best years in every person’s life? Remember that time you sent Thomas running to the bathroom to have a panic attack during Jared’s birthday party? …Or was it Monika’s? Oh no, silly me, it was both. And Ethan’s.”

The air is pressing down on him from all angles. He flips his hood up, pulling tight on the strings, and hunches over; anything to avoid the other side’s gaze, cold as death, slicing him up and pulling him apart.

“You kept him from going on a school-sponsored trip to Europe that ended up being the best two weeks of his friends’ lives, because, what, you hate flying? You thought he wouldn’t like any of the food, so he’d starve? How many life-changing experiences and future opportunities did Thomas miss out on because of that one choice alone? All because you refused to step outside your familiar little bubble.”

Amongst the round of bullets, the word “bubble” calls out to Virgil, whispering to him reminders of how he used to block out Janus, and Remus, and _him_ , and the world.  
He closes his eyes, breathes in deep, and tries to think.

**⁂**

“What are we gonna do?”  
It was Virgil who dared voice the question first, his voice raspy and terrified. Janus, one arm still paralyzed with his hand by his ear, had no answer.

“They’re gonna find out,” Virgil insisted, shoulders hunched and chin to his chest, his volume steadily rising. “What do we do when they find out?”

Janus shook his head, attempting to clear his mind of the cobwebs it had become entangled in. He had to come up with a solution before things spiraled out of their control. The walls of his room had proven to be practically soundproof, strong enough to keep Remus’s ravings from getting to anyone else in dire circumstances - but Virgil at his most inflamed was another story.

“Now now Virgil, don’t be _paranoid_. They, might not find out,” he fumbled. “I-I mean, Thomas doesn’t know yet. And he won’t, as long as it stays in this room. Look at me. We can figure something out.”

**⁂**

Janus is right.  
Virgil knows he’s ‘bad’. He’s rude, he’s stubborn, he starts fights, he holds grudges, he’s quick to judge, he’s cynical, pessimistic, defeatist, even... paranoid.

More importantly, he knows he’s bad for Thomas. He’s known since they were all kids with hardly any understanding of their influence on him, and they quickly learned that if Virgil hung around the controls for too long, Thomas would be left curled up in a fetal position in some corner, either wailing or totally shut down. Every instance Janus is dredging up -

“You made him late to the Heathers callback because you thought the guy in the trench-coat was following him, and then you tried so hard to ‘get him off your trail’ that you got us lost. Frankly, it was just as irrational that they still gave him the part after that whole debacle.”

\- was only another confirmation.

He knows just as well that he isn’t the source of **all** of Thomas’s problems; even ignoring the other… less than good aspects of Thomas, he’s seen first hand how Roman, Logan, and Patton can and do conflict with each other. But, then again, how many of those conflicts involved him in some form? They seemed to be running things well enough before he started crashing their meetings. What does he even contribute that the three of them don’t cover? When Thomas needs to listen to his gut feelings, he could probably just turn to Patton. And everything else Virgil does - reminding Thomas of mistakes he made in his past, thinking through the consequences of his actions in the present, and looking with a wary eye towards the future? Logan can handle all that with a more grounded, objective perspective.

Which makes it all the more strange that Logan was the first to show him appreciation, with no strings attached.  
_“You did a good job. Despite you clearly not enjoying taking part, you still participated. You offered your points, and you even reasoned, in your own way; and all of that is commendable. You are wrong about a lot of things, but I don’t necessarily mind your company.”_  
He can’t put to words what exactly it says that this was the most genuine gratitude he’d received from another side in over a decade.

Now just a few weeks later, Logan joined Roman in crossing Virgil’s boundaries, and he still hasn’t forgiven either of them for that… but he’s endured far worse betrayals of trust from his “real friends”. What Janus is doing right now -

“You kept Thomas up all night before multiple exams worrying if he’d studied enough, which meant he was too exhausted to remember any of the handful of things he did study for. I’m sure Logan appreciated that.”

\- Yeah, that’s worse.

Virgil has reasons for choosing as of late to spend his time not with those so-called friends, but with his new “coworkers”. It’s not just because Logan is sometimes nice to him, and Patton often is (he’s not sure himself when exactly that started), and Roman… well, at least he doesn’t treat Virgil like his lab rat, like an ant under a magnifying glass, as a certain other side does.

It’s not just because they don’t exclusively draw their humor from the well of cruelty. It’s not just because every conversation they have isn’t treated like another battle in an endless war. It’s not just because, no matter how heated the arguments they do have can get, they always own up to their faults, find a compromise, and leave on good terms, all smiling as they sink out. It’s not just because they care about each other, implicitly and openly, not just about what they want, what they think is _“best for Thomas”_.

It’s all those factors and more. They’re everything Virgil appreciates in Thomas’s friends. They’re genuine; constant; reliable. When Virgil’s with them, he… feels… safe. He trusts them. They make him want to be better.

And the more he retreats into visions of them, despite doing to escape Janus’s ravings, the clearer it becomes that the other side was also right about something else.  
They’re, slowly but surely, coming to trust him too. They might not be glad whenever he shows up, but they let him stick around. Even Roman hasn’t tried to force him to leave (past his first appearance). They take him and his suggestions seriously, whether or not he’s trying to help. And as much as he hated the others changing him, the whole exercise was meant to make him feel better; which it did, in a roundabout way.

“More recently, you’ve had Thomas turn down multiple invitations to hang out with his friends, even though you were so pressed about the idea of losing them, so afraid they would turn on him and move on without a word. Hmm. Seems like you just wasted Thomas’s time with that discussion. The one time the others do something for you, and this is how you repay them?”

They did that, for him. They, oh, god, they care about him, they really do; even if just as another aspect of Thomas.  
Even, Thomas…

_“Huh. You, actually have a point… No this is great, this really helps put things into perspective!”_  
_“Bleak, but I appreciate you trying to contribute.”_  
_“Oh, I don’t think that’s all that you do-”_  
_“Sorry about all that, Anxiety… And, for the record, I like you **all** just the way that you are.”_

**⁂**

Virgil’s gaze returned to Janus, at once both hopeful and doubtful. But there was something wrong. His left eye had transmuted into a murky periwinkle, with occasional flickers of purple.

The sight caused a crack in Janus’s hastily crafted mask of confidence, and any reassurance Virgil had taken from it evaporated. “No, we, we can’t, he’s gonna find out, he **has** to,” he heaved, reverb creeping into his voice as it grew ever louder. “If not because of us, then because of, Remus or Roman probably, and then everyone else will, and then-”

**⁂**

The dam breaks, and panic floods in. Because they shouldn’t trust him, especially Thomas. For all the reasons Janus is still rambling on about -  
“Let’s not even get into the Movie Trip Incident.”  
\- and nearly countless more that it would take the rest of his life to list; including all of the chains which make up Virgil’s cursed armor, every choice he and Janus made in service of one terrible lie.

**⁂**

“Virgil, stop,” Janus interjected, struggling to keep his tone free of anger or panic. “This isn’t helping.”  
But Virgil continued reviving the visions that still haunted them both, like a prophet possessed, his eyes trained on the ground. The sizzling of lightning within his storm-cloud aura increased in volume and frequency. A faint tremor rumbled beneath their feet, almost causing Janus to lose his balance.

“Listen to me, Virgil!”  
The command fell on deaf ears. The door shuddered in its frame, as if on the verge of bursting open. And Virgil kept talking.

**⁂**

Virgil remembers the comments that called Thomas an inspiration. What those people don’t realize, the thing which triggered the queasiness in Virgil’s gut when he looked at them, is that Thomas did all that in spite of him. He’s incompatible with that best version of Thomas. He would - will - nearly did - ruin him, if Thomas were to give him the chance.

“You were so certain that one of his boyfriends was cheating on him that you cut off contact with him completely, without explanation. You lost him and all his friends over something that probably wasn’t even true.”

He can’t keep playing along with this lie. He can’t change what he is. He can never be one of the good ones, no matter how much he might yearn for it.

“In fact, I’ll guarantee it wasn’t true. Take that as you will.”

…And yet. He can’t go back. He can’t go back to _them_ , not after experiencing something like actual friendship. At this point, he doesn’t think Janus wants him back anyway. They’d all hate Virgil - and they’d be right to.  
He’s a coward.

“There’s the morning heading to church when you somehow became convinced that the family was going to get in a car crash on the way there or back. When Thomas started crying like a baby during the homily his parents had to take him outside until he could breathe again. And you kept screaming at him about it until he got home, at which point he spent the rest of the day in bed.”

The bubble has dissolved in Janus’s acid, and he shows no signs of stopping. Virgil’s hands fly to his ears, but no matter how deep his fingernails dig into the fabric of his hood, nearly penetrating the skin, the echoes of hissing hate continue to reverberate in his skull as loud as the frenzied beating of his heart. All he can do is stand there and take it.

**⁂**

Janus couldn’t take it. He slammed his eyes shut and threw his hands to his ears to try and block out the reminders of what terrible fates awaited them; but like spiders, the words crawled through every crevice and nestled into him, started eating him alive.

**⁂**

Virgil knows this sensation well, the feeling of slowly burning up from the inside out. He thought he’d learned to absorb the heat. Yet it’s so, so much worse when it’s someone else pouring the matches down his throat.

“You made him hate himself. For a while there, you made him hate waking up every morning, because you’d always be the first voice in his ear, listing off all the ways things could go wrong that day. And do you know who’s responsible for making it so that Thomas doesn’t look at you now and instantly recall every reason he has to despise you? For giving you a chance to prove you’re something more than all that?”

The flames roar inside Virgil, licking at his bones, leaping for the chance to burst through his skin and out his mouth. It would be easy to give in to them. He would let himself implode, let them turn him and everything else in the room to ash, if he knew he wouldn’t be responsible for putting himself back together and cleaning up the mess afterward.

If only he could become the inferno: unleash his rage at everything he’s done, everything Janus and the others have done to him, then flicker out, leaving no trace. Leaving Thomas with one less burden.  
And then something tells him he can - if he’ll only listen.

**⁂**

Janus needed to do something. He wanted Thomas to live his life in whatever way brought him the most happiness, that’s always what he had fought for - but he couldn’t risk letting any of _**that**_ happen to him. He needed to protect him. But how could he protect Thomas from all that; from the world; from the truth? He didn’t have any answers, any solutions - he didn’t even know what he was supposed to be.  
The only thing he knew at that moment, was that Virgil needed to stop.

**⁂**

There’s another voice in Virgil’s head now, repeating everything Janus has said at a constantly increasing speed, accusations and condemnations overlapping into an amorphous chorus. He almost thinks he hears, through the cackling of the pyre, that Janus’s current tone has changed, softened? He strains to make out the words, and - and the shrieking becomes ten times as loud all at once. He joins in, as if to drown it out; as if to use up the last of his soul; as if he has any power at all.  
The only thing he knows at this moment, is that ~~it~~ \- is that Janus needs to stop.

So Virgil fills his lungs with smoldering air, and **⁂**  
“If you don’t want anyone to know,” Janus growled, like an engine revving to life, “then you should **~~⁂~~**  
hands lowering on their own, hairs standing on their ends, body tensing and compressing like a spring, every part of him screaming, screaming for salvation,  
past and present cry at once,  
**“SHUT UP!”**  
~~⁂~~  
And when Janus’s eyes snapped open, he saw Virgil, wide eyes locked on him in turn, with his hand clasped over his mouth.  
⁂  
And when Virgil’s eyes fly open, he doesn’t see anything but raging flames.  
But he can sense that if he could see, he’d see Janus, pale as a ghost, with his hand welded to his own mouth.

The mindscape holds its breath.

⁂

A minute passed in perfect silence. The room had gone still, and the aura around Virgil was finally dissipating. The two stared at each other as if either could explain what had just occurred.

Then Janus noticed his fingers were digging into his palm, and he released the fist his hand had formed at his side. At the same instant, Virgil’s hand detached from his face. He immediately pulled it down and took in a large gulp of air. As he got used to breathing again, his body remained tense, and his stunned, almost horrified expression, akin to when a friend says something you hadn’t thought they were capable of saying, made it clear why.

Janus’s eyes had darted down to his own hand, which he now raised to inspect. He refused to move any other muscles. His mind replayed the event on loop: the electricity that had surged through him as he called out for the power to do something, anything; and then the moment of release when his wish was granted. It had felt… satisfying. Empowering. Natural. Right. As if it was something he always could have done, and simply never needed to before now. It was how he imagined conjuring objects felt for the creativity twins, or how summoning just the right factoid for the situation felt for Logan. It was His Thing.

And as he looked back at Virgil, his friend, who had made him aware of this existential threat to Thomas’s well-being, with whom he’d always shared the base goal of Thomas’s self-preservation…

After all those years without a clue, the disparate pieces of Janus finally clicked into place.

“What… how… did _you_ do that?” Virgil sputtered, at last, his throat hoarse. “Since when?”

With a light chuckle and a golden twinkle in his left eye, Janus straightened his posture, rolled back his shoulders, and smiled, perhaps a tad too gleefully. “Don’t worry, Virgil,” he stated with newfound purpose. “I know what we can do.”

**⁂**

_**“I’ll take it from here”**_ , the voice crackles in Virgil’s ear.

Janus’s face grimaces and drips with sweat as he strains to free himself. The spider threads wrapped around his brain fall away. The fog fades from the edges of his vision. All the darkness in the room appears to be gathering around Virgil, bolstering the storm-cloud emanating from him. He stands unusually straight, with his white-knuckled hands in fists at his sides, and the slightest smirk on his face. He’s staring Janus down with the wrath of a dying star, yet also seems not to see him at all.

“You’re right, _**Deceit**_ ,” he says. “I’m just as bad as the rest of you.” His voice is stilted and hollow, almost robotic. “In fact, I think Thomas would be better off without any of us. So you know what?” He chuckles, somehow without moving any facial muscles. “I’m going to do my job as Thomas’ protector and make sure he never has to deal with me again.”

At last, Janus is able to pry his hand from his mouth. The area around it stings. He stares at the trembling hand as if compelling it to explain itself, reminding it who is in charge. Then his gaze returns to the other side, and he fully processes what he said.

Dropping his arm, Janus sputters, “You - You can’t be serious.” A nervous laugh escapes him, but he shakes it off and hastily gathers his confidence. “You can’t just, disappear; you’re Thomas’s anxiety, you’re part of him. There will always be something for him to be worried about, afraid of-”

“But he **won’t** be afraid if he can’t feel Fear. And he can’t feel Fear if all his Fear stays locked up in here until it disappears.” A sing-song quality infects his tone, and his grin grows. “Out of sight, out of mind, as they say.” Then both wither. “Isn’t that what you’ve been trying to do to us all along?”

“No,” Janus retorts instinctively, more offended than anything else, “I was only ever-”

 **“LIAR!”** Crashes of lightning echo in his exclamation, accompanied by searing bolts streaking through his smoky aura. Janus recoils. The faint afterglow isn’t violet, as he expects, but a… warmer color.  
“There’s… no need for that,” he hisses. He pauses and, sure enough, smells something burning.

“I agree. No need for **either** of us to do such a thing.” He flashes his teeth and, for a split second, Janus sees fangs. “Just think about it. Thomas doesn’t need me to ‘protect’ him from the world; he should learn to tackle it head-on, in all its, _‘unpleasantness’_.”

Janus knows exactly what ‘Virgil’ is doing. As much as it makes his skin crawl, experience tells him that the best way to deal with it - with _him_ \- is to let the flames die out, and proceed from there. Still, he takes a few steps back. Just in case.

The other side’s voice warps as he prattles on, speeding up and sparking to life. “How many more things will Thomas be able to succeed at without me holding him back? How many more things will he be willing to try? No more missed opportunities, no more clamming up during presentations of any kind, no more sabotaging his own relationships. No more nightmares, no more self-hatred, no more performance anxiety, no more social anxiety, No. More. Anxiety!”

By the last phrase, he looks and sounds like a game show host declaring a victor, arms outspread. His smile has fully sprouted, and the thunder reaches its defeating chorus.

Janus braces himself.  


“Why, with enough time,” ‘Virgil’ proclaims, “he’ll forget what it was like to feel afraid at all.”  
His eyes gleam - periwinkle turning to purple; brown turning to orange.

The lightning shrieks behind him as he delivers the stinger. “And, AND, once Thomas realizes he’s better off not giving his _‘dark sides’_ a second thought, he’ll _**never**_ listen to the rest of you,” he sneers, overflowing with schadenfreude. “He’ll be safe from you, and Remus, and, of course,” he winks,  
**“M̷̢͖̤͍̟̪͐̐̀̚͝E̶̲̫̪͔͌̔ͅ”**

The roar that erupts from Virgil’s throat plunges the room into total darkness. A wave of heat blasts through Janus, carrying with it echoes of a child’s cruel laughter. Both dissipate quickly.

After some more seconds, the desk lamp flickers back on. Janus can make out the other side across the room, despite the thick clouds still surrounding him. He’s slouched over, panting, hands over his eyes.  
“Virgil?”

He freezes for a moment. His fingers slowly fold down, followed by his arms. He blinks rapidly, seemingly surprised Janus is still there. For a second, he looks… relieved? But his expression hardens into an exhausted determination. He straightens his back and neck most of the way, then sweeps his bangs to one side so he can lock eyes with the instigator.

“Yeah, it’s me,” he grunts. “And I’ve made up my mind.”

Janus lets out the breath he didn’t realize he was holding. He puts on his default smile, even daring to close the gap between them. “Wonderful. So glad you got that out of your system.” He stops to pull his collar back up and fix his hair. “Now, I know in the past few minutes we’ve both said things we regret while under certain, exaggerating influences; so how about we just forget this ever happened? You can come back with me to say hi to Remus, he’s been so lonely without you, and-”

“Hold up,” Virgil interjects, raising a hand, “Do you think I wasn’t serious about all that?”

Janus pauses. “...Yes. You weren’t even the one saying it.”

Virgil glowers at him and drops his arm. “You know how he works though. He only said the things I couldn’t bring myself to.” He takes a deep breath, exhaling most traces of malice from his tone. “I do more harm to Thomas than good, I see that now. The fact that I just let **that** happen, because I thought it would end it and I was too tired to deal with you myself,” he unscrunches his face and lifts his eyes back off the floor, “that proves that I’m a, a liability, a ‘time bomb’ or whatever. If I stick around, it’s gonna happen again, and it’s gonna be worse; and then it’ll happen again, so on and so on for the rest of his life.” He knows for certain; this isn’t the first time he’s given up his agency to another side. “And since I want what’s best for Thomas, same as you, supposedly, I… only really see one viable option to take.”

Virgil’s gaze is so cold, so piercing with intent, that Janus takes an unconscious step back. He looks away in time to catch the ectoplasmic purple webs as they ripple out from beneath Virgil’s feet, quickly covering the floor and beginning to climb the walls.

Swallowing his fear, Janus responds, “Stop being ridiculous. You clearly have not thought this through. If you cut yourself off in the way you’re proposing, you’ll still be hurting Thomas, just in another way. You’re part of him, for better and for worse, same as the rest of us. That’s all I was trying to-”

“But I don’t have to be. Things change.”

Janus flinches.

In the back of Virgil’s head, a counter plays in his own voice: _“There’s change you **can** control but **shouldn’t**.”_  
Well, he already has hypocrisy on his list of flaws.

The nearly transparent webs have conquered the ceiling, cloaking the whole room in their indigo glow. Janus glances over his shoulder to confirm that they’ve claimed the door as well. When he looks back at the other side, he catches a flicker of remorse in his expression.

“You can still leave,” Virgil says, the light in his irises slowly dimming. “Actually, it would be great if you did that. Right now.” The shades around him sharpen. “Don’t make me force you.”

On any other occasion, Janus would have laughed at the juvenile threat. But as the shadows stretch out to form something resembling spider legs, he can feel the ice cracking under his feet, and realizes he’s strayed too far from the shore.

“Listen to me. By doing this, you will still be hurting Thomas,” he slowly repeats, staring Virgil down with all the resolve he can muster. “Because yes, he needs you; and the others - Patton, Logan, even Roman - they’ll miss you.” His voice creaks with desperation. His hands tremble at his sides. “They care about you. If you leave, you’ll hurt them. And, you’ll… I… you’ll…”

Virgil raises an eyebrow, even as the color fades from his face, and his scleras dissolve to black.

Janus’s lips part without sound. He wants to say it so badly. The phrase he’d thought had been a presupposition after over two decades of only having each other for sanctuaries. The assumption which had no need to be spoken aloud; the genuine sentiment which persisted beneath every jab and insult, every twisted joke and prank, every playful, harmless - and not so harmless - show of hostility.

He wants to say he cares, too.  
But his defenses betray him. The truth dies on his forked tongue.

Virgil sighs. “They’ll forget about me. They should.” The smoky limbs fuse to his back. “Just let me do the right thing, for once,” he pleads. The darkness pooling in his eyes overflows, mixing with his lopsided eyeshadow. “Let me save Thomas from us. From himself.”

Janus nearly chokes mid-inhale, the last phrase hitting him in the heart like a heat-seeking missile. He knows those words.

He’s used to having his own venom spit back at him - it’s happened plenty in this conversation alone. But he sees past Virgil’s black tinted lenses to broken eyes scavenging for reassurance, and he recognizes that the cracks first appeared on a night like this, years and years ago. Fractures he’d assumed had long since healed on their own.

_“Isn’t that what you’ve been trying to do to us all along?”_

He knows the words, and, at last, he understands what they did.

**⁂**

“For how long?”  
“Only as long as we have to,” Janus assured him. “At least until Thomas moves out. Once he’s in a place where he can handle the consequences, he should be able to live his life and love whomever he wants; and if anyone has a problem with it, I’ll be the first to defend him.”

“Hold up, he can’t know until he’s eighteen? At _least_? That’s…” Virgil’s voice trailed off as the magnitude of the plan settled in, a web of futures too vast for him to perceive. He started scratching behind one of his ears to calm himself. “Do you really think we can pull that off?”

“I was **made** for this, Virgil,” Janus asserted, the words ringing truer in his ears with every repetition. “Look at me; I’ve managed to, mostly, keep Remus out of Thomas’s mind for the past few years - and that was before I could just shut him up. By comparison, this should be easy!” He flashed another shark-toothed smile, his left eye still glimmering gold.

In the commanding radiance of his friend’s newfound hubris, Virgil couldn’t help but shrink into himself and drop his gaze.

Janus, in turn, let out a frustrated sigh. “As for you, you’ll just have to shush up and toughen up. That being said, if you don’t trust your own ability to keep this secret, I do hope you can trust me to pick up the slack.” He paused, then inspiration struck: “In fact, why don’t I give you another demonstration?”

Virgil lifted his head, only to vigorously shake it side to side.  
“Oh, come on, Virgil,” Janus teased, “I need to make sure I know what I’m doing here. Just, try saying it.”  
_‘It?’_ Virgil mouthed, confusion poorly plastered over dread on his face.  
“Don’t play dumb. It’s just three words. It won’t kill you,” Janus insisted, “I swear.”

Indignation flickered in Virgil’s eyes, but he was too exhausted to put up more of a fight. Forcing his expression to stay that of a grimace, he inhaled, then spat out the words:  
“Thomas is-”  
*Snap.*

Success. Janus kept his hand frozen in place while Virgil glared at his cheeky grin. Rather than release him right away, he ground his heels back into the carpet and called on his network of roots. His eyes stared through Virgil; the rest of his face turned to stone, unreadable. He felt the electricity gathered in his fingertips flowing back down through his perfectly still body, into the root system, carrying his instructions to every corner of Thomas’s being.

The muffled sounds of Virgil struggling to rip his hand free brought Janus back. He opened his hand, dropping it at the same instant Virgil’s fell.

“And there,” he exhaled triumphantly. “Now if you don’t want that to happen again, I’d suggest not even thinking of saying those words in the same breath.”

Virgil continued to glower at him as he processed the implications of his statement.

“I hope you’re not having regrets now,” Janus huffed, sounding almost disappointed. “It’s out of my hands.”  
“I… I don’t know,” Virgil confessed. “This is, **big**. Is it our choice to make? Like, shouldn’t we go to Patton first?”  
“Do you _want_ to tell him about it?”

The surprise in Janus’s voice sent Virgil’s mind racing. He knew Janus often found himself at odds with the moral side, and thereby the others, but…  
“...Do you really think he’d be-”

“I don’t want to take any chances,” Janus hissed. “We can’t let **any** of the others know. For this to work, maintaining Thomas’s internal peace and happiness will be **as** important as keeping up appearances and his relationships in the ‘real’ world.”

Janus waited until Virgil’s nervous eyes reconnected with his before continuing. “Do you understand? This isn’t just about protecting Thomas from what’s out there. It’s also about protecting him from, Patton, perhaps; and **you** , more pressingly; and the rest, however they might react, and whatever rifts might then form between us.” Each word carried the weight of all those premonitions he swore to prevent, and all the acts, all the lies, it would take to do so. “We have to protect him from **himself** … until he’s ready to face it.”

He took a breath and extended his hand. “So. Virgil. Are you with me?”

Virgil’s expression was, for the first time, impossible for Janus to decode. His arms remained glued to his sides. The world around them was still, like a photograph taken just before a crisis erupts. Silent, like a grave filled with restless secrets.

Janus gulped and prepared to ask again. This time, he forced himself to drop any pretense of authority, of infallibility, of invulnerability. If they were going to pull this off, they needed to be on the same page.  
“Do you trust me?”

It took some excruciating moments of continued staring into each other’s souls. A minute or more of Janus’s own sense of self-preservation crying out for permission to lock his heart away again; and of Virgil’s mind rambling through every imagined consequence, throwing it all onto the fire to fuel his resolve.  
But Janus held out. And Virgil softened.

“Okay. I trust you.” He awkwardly grasped the outstretched hand. “For Thomas.”  
Janus’s face broke out in relief that quickly hardened into conviction. They shook on it.  
“For Thomas.”

**⁂**

Virgil’s patience has worn out.  
The black fog has returned, spiraling out from around him. His hollow eyes are trained on the intruder, new appendages poised to strike. He takes a firm step forward. Then another.

Stepping back in turn, Janus nearly loses his balance, woozy from the lack of oxygen. When he inhales, he tastes ash and dust. He coughs out cobwebs. His throat aches. For once, he wishes his power wasn’t silence.

He stammers as if thrashing to stay above water, “No, you - this, this isn’t you. I, I’m-”  
“As if you ever knew me,” the other side scoffs, rearing up with narrowed eyes. “As if you ever cared.”

Janus’s exposed heart shivers in the storm. “Virgil, please-”

“I’M NOT VIRGIL!”

The power emanating from his scream throws Janus across the room. His back slams against the door. He crumples.

“I was NEVER _'Virgil'_.”

As Janus’s body recovers, not helped by the quaking of the walls, his eyes dart about the clouded room, searching for any telltale hints of orange. He finds none.  
Back on his feet, he dares to look the spider in its black hole eyes; and the terror that strikes him like a lightning bolt confirms this rage is all his own.

“I’m Anxiety. I’m… **Paranoia**.”

The door flies open, sending Janus stumbling backward into the hall. He recovers his balance and instinctively reaches out to the hunched silhouette - but the door slams shut.

He’s stunned for a moment. His mind replays the last few seconds on loop, overlayed with an older implanted memory. Then his outstretched hand homes in on the doorknob and desperately wrangles it. After a few seconds of no results, the knob’s silver sheen peels away, revealing an amorphous black cloud that promptly unleashes a burst of electricity. His hand recoils. He can smell the flesh of his palm burning. Refusing to look, he pulls it into his chest. His other hand crosses over to tightly squeeze his forearm.

For a minute, all he can do is hiss through the pain, and watch as shadows envelop the rest of the door from the frame inward. He wants to say something, knows he should, but his brain remains scrambled, and his voice cowers in his throat.  
The door is just as silent as it melds into the wall.

Janus’s ears ring from the sudden absence of sound. He takes a step back, then frantically looks about the hall to confirm there is no other activity stirring in the mindscape. His eyes linger on the grand gate of shades he maintains; the marker of the boundary between those sides Thomas accepts, and those he does not.

He should tell them. He should cross the border, sound the alarm, throw their doors open, drag them over, and see what they can do. He should tell them everything.

Of course, he can’t. For one, how likely are they to even give him a chance, instead of just shutting their doors in his face? Especially this late at night. Especially with the state he’s in.

If they do spare him a few seconds to explain, they’ll be quick to lay all the blame on him. And maybe he deserves it from a certain standpoint, but as long as he’s still planning to eventually reveal himself to Thomas and win his trust, he cannot let that be the foot he starts out his renewed relationships with them on. They don’t need another reason to malign him.

If this is truly as serious as Janus’s quivering heart fears it is, then the others will realize something’s wrong soon enough. Perhaps the lag time will make it easier for cool heads to prevail. Plus, the upset side would probably (hopefully) go easier on them if the one who ticked him off didn’t tag along.

Some part of Janus knows that he’s making the same mistake again in trusting time to reveal the answers. But when he looks back at where the door used to be, his remaining resolve evaporates.

All he’s left with is the hope that the other three can find the solution he couldn’t.  
He has to hope that they really do know him better.

On the other side of the wall, ~~Virgil~~ ~~Anxiety~~ Paranoia struggles to breathe. Meanwhile, things settle. The shimmering layer of webs on the walls lets out a burst of purple light as its effect kicks in, sealing off the room, then becomes fully transparent. His ‘spider legs’ lose their shape and rejoin the storm-clouds surrounding him. The ink is draining from his eyes. He vigorously shakes his head to expel the last of it, then scans the room like a perched bird of prey. When he finds no traces of orange, he lets out a disappointed sigh. It was a long shot, but he’d feel slightly less shitty if he had managed to catch two birds with one stone.

Then he’s compelled to try something else.  
“...Janus?”  
The soundwaves wither when they hit the walls. The clock’s incessant ticking marks the passing of a minute. No response.

“If you can hear me,” he croaks, “Don’t… I…”  
Fatigue robs him of his words. His head droops, and his legs burn.  
He’s so, so tired.

One hand drifts over to the desk lamp and switches it off. He sluggishly stumbles to the bed, nudging the desk chair back in the other direction on the way. His foot bangs into the bedframe. He doesn’t feel a thing.  
He collapses onto the mattress like a felled tree. The thick blanket soaks up his first few tears, water and oil. Then he rolls over, aching eyes drilling into the void above, leaks streaming down either side.

A cement mix of abstract emotions pumps through his veins. He feels as though he’s sinking into the floor. He welcomes it.  
He’s achieved acceptance.

...

Janus has to steel himself before grabbing his own doorknob. Its silver sheen taunts him. He still holds his injured hand close to his chest.

“Whatcha got there, Scaleface?”

His expression rots into a grimace. “Nothing at all,” he exhales. “You know, I _love_ that new toothpaste you’re using, but you _really_ don’t have to be this close for me to appreciate it.” He turns around once the other side’s breath is no longer baking his neck.

“Really? I didn’t _peg_ you as a piss and pineapple type of guy,” Remus giggles. To Janus’s immense relief, he’s at least wearing green boxers.

“Is that what that was? Fascinating. You’ll have to tell me all about it, _in the morning_ ,” he glares. “Some of us have important work to do which requires sufficient rest.”  
“Yeah, but you don’t.”  
Janus’s eye twitches.  


Remus isn’t done. “Oh boy, what happened to your hand?” He exclaims as if just noticing it. “You should get gloves for that. Might I recommend-”  
**“In. The. Morning.”**

“Okay, geez,” Remus rolls his eyes. “Don’t know what has you so _heated_ at one a.m.”  
“I was visiting someone.” In his exhaustion, the words slip off his tongue before he thinks them through.

“OoOoh, pray tell?” Remus grins, leaning forward. “Were you perhaps checking in with our long lost anxious friend, [-]?”  
He pauses, genuine surprise on his face. “Huh.” He looks away. “[-]. [—]. Nope, still nothing.” He turns back to Janus, who seems only slightly more confused by him than normal, and asks, “Did you do that?”

Janus’s face begins to contort into a scowl, as if to respond, _“No, why would I-”_  
But then it plummets.

He whips around before he can register Remus’s reaction. His hand grapples the doorknob.  
“I have to go,” he says. “Don’t… just don’t do anything.”  
He flings the door open and flees inside, slamming it shut behind him.

His handle fumbles for the light switch on the wall. Soon the room is bathed in sickly yellow. He takes a minute to regain his composure. When he’s certain Remus has left, he lets out a shaky laugh that quickly gets away from him, wringing his lungs dry. He raises his hand to hold it back, but he freezes when he sees it hovering a few inches before his face. Silence settles back in.

Through his trembling fingers, his eyes latch onto the snakeskin chest in the corner of his room, a chest containing decades of particularly sensitive, volatile memories. It’s rustling.  
He approaches cautiously, kneeling on the carpet before it. He puts his hands on either side and, before he applies any pressure, it pops open. His good hand dives in and lands on a heap of soft fabric.  
He knows what it is. The second he recognizes it, he wants to retreat, to retrieve his hand and slam down the lid. But his willpower has run empty, and so a deeper instinct takes over.

He grasps the blanket and pulls it out in one swift motion. The felt skulls stare back at him, many faded and peeling. The threads at the edges are in various states of unraveling. Having never been washed, it bears plenty of stains, and it has a certain musk to it. It’s somehow warm.

His other hand drifts over and clutches the blanket, rubbing the soothing material against his stinging palm. He doesn’t realize he’s crying until one of his tears lands on it. He raises his elbow to wipe the oncoming precipitation away with his sleeve, but halfway to his face, the smell of the thing really hits him - the smell of Halloween, thunderstorms, uneven eyeshadow, outgrown sweaters, Grimm’s Fairy Tales, crayon stubs, fake blood, spider stickers, shadow puppet shows, night terrors, monsters under the bed, warm milk at midnight, a hug; times past and years lost.  


And Janus falls apart.

**⁂**

_“For Thomas.”_

Virgil was the first to pull his hand away. Janus watched him wipe the sweat from his brow with his sleeve, then shake out the built-up tension in his upper body. He observed a lightness in his posture and face that had been absent since he first entered his room; however, his eyes were still clouded, dark as the bags under them. He’d be willing to bet that he wouldn’t be getting any sleep that night. Which reminded him of something…

While Virgil let out a strained yawn, Janus scooped his blanket off the floor.  
“Hey, here you go… _pal_.” He cringed at the word as he draped the blanket over Virgil’s shoulders. He expected him to balk at the sudden sentimentality, but the drained shadow of a boy seemed entirely unmoved. Here in the eye of the hurricane, the encroaching clouds still weighed on them both.

“Well, you’re free to go,” Janus sighed. But just before he turned around, he thought to make another offer, to try and lighten the air. “Unless, you might feel better if, say, I gave you one of those… ‘hugs’ Thomas seems to like?”

He regretted the suggestion before it fully left his lips. This was not his thing, and of all the sides, Virgil was the next least likely to appreciate it.

His look of revulsion seemed to confirm it. However, when the shock wore off, and he recognized that Janus was being sincere…

“Sure,” Virgil mumbled.  
“...Oh. Alright then.”

At first, neither of them moved. Then Janus opened his arms in a stilted manner, like a rusted animatronic. Taking the cue, Virgil sluggishly shuffled forward, until Janus was able to wrap his arms around him. They stayed in this almost-embrace for a moment or two, both holding their breath without either realizing it.

Suddenly Virgil’s arms were crushing Janus’s torso, and he was heaving into his chest, his head buried in his shoulder. Then snot was dripping from his inflamed nose, and hot stinging tears were leaking through his eyelids, even as he was squeezing them shut with all the strength he had left. His jittery exhales morphed into strained cries and ghostly wails, muffled and formless, yet perfectly clear in meaning.

Janus had no experience in this matter. He initially didn’t dare to move a muscle, paralyzed by the fear he would somehow make things worse. But when Virgil’s legs buckled in, he instinctively pulled him into his chest and slowly lowered the two of them until they were kneeling on the floor. Then he grabbed the ends of the falling blanket and had it encircle them both; and, despite all the occasions he and Remus had made fun of Virgil for being so attached to the ratty old thing, Janus found it eased his nerves.

Virgil was still sobbing, though softer. Overwhelmed, lost, Janus briefly shut his eyes and reached out to his network, seeking memories of how Thomas’s guardians had calmed him down in similar situations. Soon enough, he was rubbing Virgil’s back with one hand, while he brushed the bangs out of his bloodshot, waterlogged eyes with the other.

“Virgil, hey, buddy, it’s okay. Let it out,” he murmured. It was a new tone of voice for him, this balancing act of coming across as both confident and compassionate. It sounded insultingly fake to his own ears; however, he could feel Virgil’s convulsions slowing, so he continued. “I’m here, Virgil. It’s all going to be okay. Do you hear me? Thomas will be okay. I promise.”

Later that night, after Virgil had dried his eyes and left, Janus would be lying stiff in his bed, running his tongue across his teeth while he waited for sleep to overtake him, and feel a sting, accompanied by a hint of blood. When he would sit up and feel the spot with his finger, he would be left to wonder, with a pit forming in his gut, when and how his one of his teeth had mutated into a fang, and what exactly it meant.

But while Virgil was emptying out before him, neither that discovery, nor the scales that would follow, nor the runoff currently staining his polo, nor anything else, past, present, or future, took up real estate in Janus’s mind. Only this declaration, which he wished with all his heart would prove to be more than just another lie:

“We’ll get through this, you and me. We’ll do this right."


	2. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A quick check-in with Janus right after Accepting Anxiety, bridging the gap between the events of the fic and his first appearance in-series.

Janus knows when Thomas leaves Anxiety’s room. The roots surrounding it had been expelled at some point during or just after the fiasco, but when the cobweb barrier dissolved to let Thomas and the others out, they plunged back in and sent word back to him. The news strikes Janus like a lightning bolt. Something primal takes control, sending him running into the hall, just in time to see the gate of shades move. It slides past Anxiety’s room and settles into place halfway between his and Janus’s.

The snake approaches the gate cautiously, peering through the bars to confirm that the other door has returned. It has, with an update: where the doorplate once bore the word " **Anxiety** ", written in thick, bleeding strokes, it now reads, in spiked Gothic cursive, “ **Virgil** ”.

Janus’s shoulders fall with his breath. Emotions swirl in his chest, too entangled for him to dissect; mainly relief, and then there’s… excitement? Pride? But also disappointment, or maybe envy?  
He’s never felt quite this conflicted over being right.

The tempest swells the longer he dwells on it, so he seals his walls back up. Instead, he turns his attention to what might happen next.  
It only makes sense for Virgil to come back and check in with him. After all, he has no reason to assume that Janus already knows he’s okay, and if their positions were switched, Virgil would certainly want to know that things worked out. It’s not like Janus expects him to apologize, for any of it, and no, he doesn’t _need_ an apology… but an acknowledgment of what happened and where they stand would be appreciated. It doesn’t have to happen right away either. Just, sometime soon.

That would be the considerate thing to do. Which is why Janus can’t even convince himself of it. Not as long as those obsidian eyes haunt his memory. Virgil burned his bridges, and though at the time he planned to go down with it, he made it clear which side he had nothing but negative opinions of.

The gate looms over Janus like an inverted chasm, compelling him to take a few steps back. He keeps his wandering eyes from landing on his own door, with the plate that gives different labels depending on the viewer’s perspective. Now isn’t the time to contemplate how he’s a walking catalog of contradictions, to consider which parts of him he should hold onto and which he’s outgrown. He’s had enough of that in the past while.

Back to what matters. If Virgil really has left them behind…  
Well, Janus will just have to take things into his own hands, won’t he? Virgil has certainly paved the way, even if it’s the literal last thing he wanted. All Janus has to do is keep an eye out for any opportunities to further deconstruct Thomas’s black and white morality, influencing things as much as he can from behind the scenes, until Thomas (and, by extension, Virgil and the others) understands that this whole “good sides” and “bad sides” distinction is meaningless. And then, when the right moment comes, he’ll properly reveal himself and prove his merit. Followed by introducing the other “dark sides”, of course.

There **is** something else he could try in the meantime; something that would advance his cause much faster, but could just as easily blow up in his face. At the moment, his confidence isn’t quite high enough to seriously consider that as an option. There’s no way that impersonating one of Virgil’s new friends to try and convince him that he and the others deserve a chance at their own “redemption arcs” would end well. Surely, it would only make things worse.  
If he got caught.

He turns away and heads back to his room. Where Virgil can see countless futures, ranging vastly in probability, Janus (contrary to his namesake) only ever sees the future as a cloud. Dedicating himself to long term plans concocted in moments of stress has proven… not particularly successful for him. He’ll put it on the backburner; he can at least wait until the dust has settled.

Which is why, when his ears suddenly ring with the hissed distant echo of Roman saying “Yeah, and you are nothing compared to _the others-_ ”, he sends the command right back through the network to cut him off.

He’s tempted to listen in on the rest of the conversation. He wonders what the three of them said to talk Virgil down. What Thomas said to make him feel comfortable enough to share his name.  
He quickly pulls the brakes on that train of thought.

He’s standing before his door. His gloved hand grips the gilded handle. Then something occurs to him. There’s one loose thread waiting to be tied up, or snipped.

He turns to stare down the darker end of the hall. He takes a deep breath, knowing if he can’t summon the courage to do it now, he never will. And he has some questions that need answers. This time, he (hopes he) knows what not to do.

So Janus opens his eyes, and marches toward the distant orange door.


End file.
